When all else fails, eat

Between the cold, the lack of electricity, studying for finals, and a big nationwide English test coming up, my sophomores have been pretty stressed lately. They have apparently turned to food to calm their nerves, a tactic I can relate to as I'm pretty sure I used to gain ten pounds every reading week at NU. They have been kind enough to include me in their stress-eating. While I'm a bit sick of Chinese food since my town is quite lacking in variety, I always eat better when I go out with them. (But seriously, I would kill for a Portillo's hamburger right now. Or Lou Malnati's. Or even just a bowl of cereal.)

First stop this week, hot pot! Except this time my friend Sarah and I went to a place where you get to choose your own sticks with food on them from a giant refrigerator. You then put the sticks in the hot pot and pay by the stick. With each stick costing about 15 cents, I went all out.

Next up, cooking lessons round 2! My favorite girls came over to cook for me again, and were disappointed to hear I had not used the kitchen since last time we had done this. On the menu was fried bok choy, spicy pork with green peppers, dumpling soup, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made an appearance at dessert.

Finally, Justin, his girlfriend, and a few students who come to our weekly English corner went out for a family style meal of sweet and sour pork, duck, braised eggplant, and fried tofu. Ironically, the sweet and sour pork dish is the only food I have found here that remotely resembles American-Chinese food.

So well fed and ready to work, this week starts my sophomore finals. I'm giving them a listening and speaking test on top of their regularly scheduled classes, so as a break we'll just be watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Elf all week. I really doubt I'll be sick of Elf after watching it three times.

I will be sad to see my sophomore classes go. They are by far my most enthusiastic and fun students. I have really enjoyed teaching them and getting to know them. Most of them have become friends rather than students. Since my freshmen started so late thanks to their mandatory military training, I still have another couple of weeks of lessons with them.

But a month from today... Chicago!

10 Things I've Learned Through Teaching

1. Teaching allows you to develop great upper body strength. Erasing an entire whiteboard three times a day is hard work.

2. You can see everything from the front of the classroom. There is no way that student sneakily texting in the back goes unnoticed. This is a warning to all my friends still in school.

3. Putting your worksheet up to block your face while you're talking on your cell phone does nothing to hide the fact that you're talking on your cell phone. That's like the college equivalent of putting your hands over your eyes and saying, "You can't see me."

4. If you correct a student 98 times about the difference between "he" and "she", they are probably still going to get it wrong the 99th time.

5. When the student finally gets it right the 100th time, your week is made.

6. Teachers look forward to movie days even more than students do.

7. Even the best kids will try and find ways out of doing work.

8. In a class of 40+ kids you will quickly learn the names of the really good students and the troublemakers. Everyone else just kind of blends in.

9. You will do things in your classroom you would never imagine doing in public. Like singing.

10. Do not agree to take a picture with one student unless you are prepared to take pictures with all forty students. It's worse than prom.

One of my freshmen classes. It was very difficult to get them to stand still for this. Afterwards they spent 10 minutes pointing their camera phones at me.

(Not a) Winter Wonderland

Hechuan is cold in the winter. Not Chicago cold, mind you. It has yet to drop below freezing and there is never any snow. What makes it cold is that south of the Yangtze River most buildings do not have central heating. In small towns like mine, there is no heating at all. That means you run the risk of getting frostbite while writing on the whiteboard in class and all of my students dress as if they're gearing up for the Snowpocalypse.

I am luckier than most because I have a tiny space heater that was stipulated as a requirement in my contract. It is unfortunately only sufficient to heat either my upper or my lower body, never both at the same time.

But I will never take that tiny space heater for granted again. Thursday morning I woke up to find that the power was cut. It came on just long enough to have night class Thursday night, and then went out again until about an hour ago. This is how I have spent the past two days:

Chicago, I promise I will never complain about your winters again.

Table manners

On Thursday one of my students was putting on an extracurricular presentation about American table manners, and she asked me to be a guest speaker. I was given literally an hours notice, so I figured since I have (supposedly) been practicing proper American table manners for approximately 22 years now I could just wing it.

Her initial presentation was in Chinese, but fortunately one of my other students showed up and sat in the back translating for me. It was a great presentation as far as I could tell, except for a few tiny factual errors. First, she described the "American fourth course" (which comes right after the "American meat course") as the vegetable dish. Okay, I thought, maybe she is just referring to the side of green beans or broccoli that usually comes with chicken or steak. But then she showed a montage of various types of salad, including one of those edible fruit arrangements. This made me giggle a little. At another point she pointed to a really beautiful picture of a steak, and then called it fish. I’m going to have a hard time forgiving her for that one. Oh, and for some reason pretty much every photo of food she showed was of sushi. So I guess this lesson was more of the Japanese-American table manner variety.

To be fair, my presentation was certainly not perfect either. I may have accidentally said the fork goes on the right and the knife goes on the left, which was in direct contrast to what they had just been shown on the PowerPoint. I guess Home Economics in 7th grade really didn’t teach me anything. I talked about tipping, ordering at a restaurant, being a guest in someone’s home, not putting your elbows on the table, whether the boy should pay on a date… I was pretty much all over the place. But I redeemed myself at the end when I pulled a real live knife and fork out of my bag. It was like I had pulled out candy. Everyone wanted to have a go pretending to cut food. They went at it so enthusiastically it was a miracle a few fingers weren’t chopped off. Some even valiantly sacrificed parts of their notebook so their friends could actually cut something up. This didn't go so well, seeing as how it was just a butter knife.

Although I really shouldn’t poke fun at their fervor for cutlery; I’m the girl who is bringing home chopsticks for everyone as souvenirs…

LiT Pt. 5

Thanksgiving with Chinese Characteristics

Thanksgiving was pretty uneventful. Justin and I were going to host a big Thanksgiving meal, but we realized we didn't have the resources (the only traditional food we knew we could find was potatoes) or the time (we both had a full teaching day). So my Thanksgiving passed with classes where we watched a Thanksgiving episode of Friends and discussed the PG-rated history of the Pilgrims and Indians. My dinner included a grilled cheese sandwich with some of the precious cheese I brought back from Chengdu, and by the end of the day when my Thanksgiving was over and the one in the US was just starting, I was feeling a little sad. Until I got a call from one of my freshmen.

I am thankful for my students. A few of my freshmen were calling to see if they could bring over Thanksgiving presents cause they realized I must be missing home. They bought me sugar cubes, gum, lollipops, and a traditional Chinese incense holder that is supposed to bring good health. Not quite the same as turkey and stuffing, but who doesn't love sugar candy? Their thoughtfulness and gratitude remind me that I am lucky to have this opportunity.

my Thanksgiving gifts

That being said, this weekend was the first time I felt really homesick. It was hard being away from my family knowing that they were having our annual nerf-gun contest and choosing between fifty different desserts on my grandma's special "Dessert Table" without me. (Although they did make me feel included by Skyping me in.) It gave me a taste of how hard missing Christmas is going to be.

Miss and love you all!

But I want to say how thankful I am for friends and family back home (and abroad) who have been so supportive during my time here. It definitely hasn't been easy, but it would have been impossible without all the Skype sessions, email updates, and care packages. Thank you! I can't wait to see everyone over winter break.

Oh, that reminds me... I'm coming home for winter break! See everyone in January!

Chengdu in photos

Last weekend I got out of Hechuan for the first time in over a month. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province and only about two hours by train from where I am. It is especially well-known for having the largest Giant Panda Research Base and Breeding Center in the world. Close proximity + pandas = top of my travel list.

For anyone finding themselves in Chengdu, I highly recommend the Mix Lazybones Hostel. It is one of the nicest, cleanest hostels I’ve stayed at, and I’ve stayed in hostels all over Europe. They had a comfy lounge to meet travelers, free Wifi, a bunch of group tour options, and a kitchen that served Western food. (French toast! Pizza! Milkshakes!) I was in heaven.

As is usual whenever I stay at hostels, I also met some great people. After an easy train ride, I did some quick sight-seeing on my own before coming back for a Dumpling Party hosted by my hostel. I love the backpacking community; something about traveling cheaply brings out the friendliest, most open-minded people around. I latched on to some Canadians who had come down from studying in Beijing, but also met up with Germans, Dutch, British, Irish, and of course a few other Americans. It was great to meet new friends to make traveling solo more enjoyable.

The Chongqing-Chengdu bullet train. This little boy shared an orange with me.

Wenshu monastery

the hostel's dumpling making party

The next morning a group of us went to see the pandas. This was by far the highlight of the trip.

I'll let the panda photos speak for themselves:

After the pandas, the Canadians and I went out for traditional Hot Pot. As you know, I am now a Hot Pot expert. There were no English menus and no one spoke English, so we ended up just walking around from table-to-table pointing at other peoples food to show what we wanted. The whole restaurant got a kick out of this and dinner was delicious.

Hot Pot!

On Sunday, a group of eight of us (two Canadians, two Germans, and four Americans) hired a car to drive to the LeShan Buddha. I hadn't been surrounded by so many Westerners since orientation three months ago! It was great to be able to speak at full speed again without worrying if I was using words that were too big.

The LeShan Buddha is the largest stone Buddha in the world and about a two-hour drive from Chengdu. Anyone who has driven in China knows that those two hours are a harrowing mix of swerving in and out of "lanes", narrowly missing being hit by buses, and lots and lots of honking. We luckily arrived in one piece and had a great time exploring. Although as usual a lot of people seemed more interested in us than the Buddha. When else are they going to get eight foreigners in their picture at once!

They rate their toilets in China. This one was not Three Stars, as advertised.

One of the many groups who wanted a picture with us

The Hostel Group! Thanks for a great weekend.

The LeShan trip took all day, so in preparation for an early train the next morning, that night I settled in to watch the hostel's screening of Into the Wild and enjoyed one last milkshake and a hamburger. Overall, it was a great weekend with delicious food and good company.

From the mouths of babes...

Last week we talked about the pros and cons of the American education system. I then asked my students to write a letter to an American student explaining the Chinese system. In a country where negative comments about anything Chinese are rare, their candid responses were very surprising. See for yourself:

"I feel I haven't enough time to do other funny activities, such as play the instrument, draw Chinese traditional picture and so on. Particularly during the summer or winter holiday, children aren't feel happy and lots of pressure. I want to say children haven't a really happy childhood."

"As a student of China, I feel tired. In middle school and high school we must pass the examination. I wake at 8am and must study until 10pm. It is bad for health."

"Students who are bad for study will be leave out in teacher's eyes. It doesn't mean there is fair."

"American education have more free time to students to learn some new things. It makes they become creative. Chinese style is different, this style make student only pay attention to the study not society and theyself think. Although every student can learn, this is not point to a man who want to be creative. As far as I'm considered, I like American education more because it can make people open they mind and not have so much stress like China education."

"I think our education system is bad. When we begin studying in primary school we have too much homework to do and we only learn the knowledge on book and never to practice. So Chinese students lack the creative thinking and is inflexible."

"And in high school, every students want to get a good grade. So they have to study harder and harder, even they usually sleep very little time one day. Surely they don't have enough time to rest and have a good health. They don't have freedom."

(There was only one hold-out:)

"In China being a life-long learner is common for us. So our country has a perfect education system. And everyone can learn wherever they are. Do you think our country set an example in this area?"

I am very pleased with how open my students have become with sharing their opinions with me, something that didn't happen at the beginning of the semester. It definitely makes my job much more interesting since they never cease to surprise me with their views.

Anyways, I'm off to Chengdu (aka the city of pandas) on Friday. Looking forward to a weekend of cuddly animals, sight-seeing, and hopefully some Western luxuries like cheese...

LiT Pt. 4

As my friend Lauren pointed out, I am long overdue for a new Lost in Translation post. Luckily, I stumbled across the perfect addition in the supermarket this weekend.

Yes, those are Strange-Taste Horsebeans! If that name isn't enough to turn you off, the description on the back lists one of the ingredients as "Chinese prickly ash." Not one to pass up weirdly labeled food when it costs less than a dollar, I bought the horsebeans and had a try.

They were disgusting. Maybe the mistranslation wasn't so far off for once-- a combination of Strange-Taste and ash was a pretty spot on description.

A day in the life...

After more than two and a half months here, daily life has become very routine. Don’t mistake routine for meaning normal, I don't think I could ever classify living here as normal. But for the most part my days follow a certain schedule, so I thought I would lay out a typical day. Let's take Wednesday...

6:30-7:00am: Wake-up call and stretching exercises. This is the least favorite part of the day because the Bugle Call is played at full strength over the loudspeakers of my school, followed by half-an-hour of Chinese "calming" music for stretching. It is not calming, but infuriating, and there is no sleeping through it. The only upside is that one of these songs has helped me learn my Chinese numbers since it just repeats “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8” over and over again.

7:01-8:30am: Relief that the musical torture is finally over, followed by an attempt to fall back asleep that is generally unsuccessful.

8:30-9:45am: Shower, breakfast, review of lesson plans for the day. I know it’s going to be a good day if I have hot water.

9:45-10:15am: I head to my classroom. Although the walk to my class should only be five minutes, it takes me ten to get there since every Chinese student on campus (all 6,000) are moving between classes. I stand patiently in line for the stairs and manage not to get trampled. When I get to my class, which is all freshmen, they are already sitting and waiting attentively even though we still have fifteen minutes until class starts. This leads to an awkward period where, after I write the day’s plan on the board, we have nothing to do but sit and stare at each other. Five people pull out their phones to take a picture of me.

10:15-11:00am: The bell rings and the lesson begins. Today I start with a brief lecture describing the American education system. After examining some differences in other countries in small groups, the students write letters to a fake American student explaining the Chinese system. One of my students who speaks absolutely no English asks to “go to the bathroom” and never comes back. When I go through the letters at the end of the class, I have two letters that are identical down to the handwriting. One miraculously has his name signed to it.

11:00-11:10am: The bell rings again, signaling break. During break a student from my Thursday freshmen class comes in to tell me that our class is cancelled tomorrow. She is a bit unclear about why, something to do with the whole group having a mandatory class. Used to last minute schedule changes without reason I just shrug and enjoy the thought of a shortened Thursday. Although this means I will probably be asked to make it up on Saturday or Sunday.

11:10-11:55am: Class resumes. We talk in groups about what qualities make good and bad teachers, then do an activity that involves analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of several candidates for an English teaching job. Despite my pushing for the other more qualified fake applicants they choose the guy who is a Chemist at Harvard. He has never taught and has no relevant experience, but I guess the Harvard name carries weight here too. We end the class with a game of Simon Says because they love it.

12:00-2:00pm: Lunch time. I grab food from a street stand or my bakery on the way back to my apartment. Then I spend a few hours reading, revising lesson plans, practicing Rosetta stone, or watching TV.

2:30-4:10pm: Second class of the day, this time sophomores. I only have five people on my roster for this class. However, only once have all five students come to class on the same day. My average is three. Today is a great day because four have shown up. We do a slightly more sophisticated version of the Education lesson I had planned for my freshmen. During break, one of my students informs me that Monday I have to be a judge at the annual English department’s speech competition. She has no more information on a specific time or whether I need to prepare anything.

4:10-5:45pm: My second break of the day filled with reading, walking around, or watching TV on my laptop.

6:00-7:00pm: English Corner. Seven people show up, which is a huge drop from the fifty that came the first time. Luckily the group has dwindled to the students who are actually there to speak rather than just stare at Justin and me. The day’s topic is Tourism and the Environment, but no one has the ability to actually speak coherently about that. Instead we discuss food and weather. Except when one girl out of the blue suddenly announces to us that Colonel Gaddafi is her hero. Justin and I both look shocked and then try to diplomatically explain why we don’t agree. Then we quickly drop the subject for the risk of saying things that might get us deported.

7:00-8:00pm: Justin and I head to dinner with whichever of the students have invited us out this week. I have more lunch and dinner invitations here than I know what to do with. We head to a local place on campus and they order me an eggplant and rice stir-fry. Relieved that it is not something worse that I’m going to have to politely pretend to like, I discover that I genuinely enjoy this eggplant dish and mentally write it down on my Safe Foods to Eat list.

8:00-11:00pm: Back in my apartment. Wind down the day with Skyping friends and family, reading some more, making adjustments to my lesson plans for the next day, and usually watching a movie. Then early to bed in anticipation of my 6:30am wake-up call the following morning...

Just another day in China.

Hot Pot

I get several questions every time I meet a new Chinese person. I have heard these questions so many times I could answer them in my sleep. The first question is simple, “Where are you from?” Next comes, "Do you like China?" Those two I have gotten everywhere I go. Question #3, however, is one more specific to Chongqing:

“Can you eat Hot Pot?”

Hot Pot is the famous cuisine of Sichuan, the province that up until fifteen years ago Chongqing was a part of. Hot Pot is famous for being super spicy, so when someone asks me if I can eat Hot Pot they are essentially asking me if I like spicy food. Which I do, and respond accordingly, but up until Friday night I had never actually eaten Hot Pot. Hot Pot is considered a treat here, kind of like a nice steak dinner, and so whenever I go out to dinner with my students we typically frequent cheaper/faster places. But after having been asked about it fifty-bajillion times, I decided enough was enough.

Friday night, Justin, his girlfriend, and I found ourselves at Hechuan’s fanciest restaurant.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the fanciest restaurant around.

We were handed a Chinese menu and Justin and Penny proceeded to make seemingly random check marks. Then a large pot of oil was brought out. Hot Pot is kind of like fondue in that a burner on our table is used to heat up the oil so that we can cook the food of our choice right in front of us. (Side note: oil is a super important part of Chinese cooking. It is so vital and expensive that a black market has popped up where used oil is sold out the back of restaurants to street vendors who will then reuse it. More about that here.)

A small pot in the center had oil and herbs such as garlic and salt. A second larger pot of oil circled this and was filled with so many red peppers it was hard to imagine any food would fit in the oil.  Next, the uncooked food itself was brought out. Justin and Penny had ordered potatoes, seaweed, quail eggs, pork, beef skewers, ham, lettuce, sticky rice cakes, squash, and tomatoes. The bowls of food were then dumped in all at once, and I was told that whenever something started floating in the oil it was ready to eat.

Justin and Penny

While skeptical about some of their choices (quail egg?), I started out by trying one of everything. In fact, all of their chosen dishes tasted awesome. The oil had infused everything with the spices and made the food taste amazing. While I was expecting super spicy thanks to all the peppers, it was generally mild compared to some of the foods I've had here. I'm going to ignore how bad all that oil must be for me and focus on how many more vegetables I eat here than at home.

We polished off everything pretty quickly, then sat around sipping beer and enjoying the drunken karaoke that had broken out at the table next to us. While expensive by Chinese standards ($20 for all that food plus beer for three of us), I can't imagine a meal that filling and rich costing so little at home. The only downside was I managed to severely burn my mouth when I didn't properly let a tomato cool off. Once I can taste food again, which may be in several weeks, I would love to do it again. Quail eggs and all.

P.S. China does not practice Daylight Savings Time, meaning I am now a slightly-more-inconvenient 14 hours ahead of Chicago. Fun fact regarding China-time; all of China is on the same time zone. This time zone is based around Beijing, so when it's noon in Beijing it's noon in Tibet. Even though at noon in Tibet the sun is only positioned at like 8am. China, why are you so crazy?

The All-Purpose Rice Cooker

I have a rice cooker in my kitchen. Since we have already established I'm scared to death of my manual-light gas stove and ovens do not exist in China, this rice cooker is my sole means of cooking food. This means that as the weeks have gone on I have found many creative uses for it, including:

-scrambling eggs and omelette's
-toasting bread
-making grilled cheese sandwiches (with the little cheese I brought back from HK)
-cooking pasta and/or ramen noodles
-frying dumplings
-warming up marinara sauce
-stir-frying tofu
-heating water for bathing (during the horrible week my water heater was broken)

*The one thing I have yet to do with my rice cooker: cook rice.

Making a difference

My students are so great; they brought me a carved jack-o-lantern (complete with candle and lighter) to class today. Despite its horribly rotten appearance, it was one of the best gifts I've gotten because it shows that perhaps they do listen to me in class and are learning something despite my doubts. I am touched they went to all this effort! It couldn't have been easy to track down a pumpkin in Hechuan.

Students in the English Department at our Halloween Party last week

The Principal Look

I may have forgotten to mention in last week's Halloween post that during one of my freshmen classes I made a girl cry. But it wasn't my fault! Let me explain.

Usually, I am pretty lenient if a student pulls their cell phone out during a writing or reading activity because 90% of the time they are using it to look up English words they don’t know. I can always tell when they are using it for this purpose rather than texting, because if they're goofing off they give it away by sneaking guilty glances my way. But since I don't speak Chinese, sometimes the English-Chinese dictionaries on their smart phones are entirely necessary to get a point across, and most of them don't abuse this privilege.

Last week, however, one girl was not only texting in class while we were watching a video, but she was blatantly distracting three or four of her friends by showing them her texts and reading them out loud. She knew I was watching her because every time I would glance in her direction she would try and put the phone behind her back. Finally, after she continued to pull it out whenever my attention was diverted, I went over to her and asked her to put it away. When she just put it on her lap, I insisted that she actually put it inside her purse and close it. She looked appropriately ashamed that I had to have this talk with the class looking on, and I thought the problem was solved. But not two minutes later she had it out again. This time when she saw that I had caught her, I knew what I had to do.

Growing up in my house when you did something wrong you were rarely yelled at. My dad, who was a middle school principal for most of my childhood, would instead just give you what my sister and I called his “Principal Look”. This look meant, “I am extremely exasperated and disappointed in you. I thought I raised you better than that, and it hurts me that you would think it was okay to act that way. Don't ever let me catch you doing that again.” The Look was always super effective.

This was my first time utilizing The Look, but I directed the best version I could summon right at her. This time she looked horrified, and I felt sure that the problem was really settled. I was secretly patting myself on the back for using The Look and gaining the same effective results it had always gotten my dad. Until a second later I saw her hiding her head behind her friend's shoulder. At first I thought she might have the phone out again. Then I noticed she was instead hiding the fact that she was wiping away tears from her eyes.

Oops. I guess my look was a little more potent than I thought. I'll have to work on that.

Ghosts and witches and vampires. Oh, my.

This past week presented the perfect opportunity to get away from the book's boring topics and plan my lessons around Halloween. As it turns out, the concept of Halloween sounds a lot sillier when you are trying to explain it from scratch to a group of forty Chinese students.
Well, you see, we dress up in costumes. Like witches, and ghosts, and stuff. Then we go knock on strangers' doors and they give us candy! Oh, and we take knives to these big orange vegetables we call pumpkins, and we make faces in them. And then we have a big party!

After browsing lots of Halloween websites I settled on two main activities for the week to practice our new vocabulary words: watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", and practicing writing with horror story prompts. I also brought candy to class, and not coincidentally, had my highest attendance rates of the semester.

I saw Charlie Brown as the perfect way to "waste" twenty-five minutes of class, but I did not anticipate how much I would hate it after watching the same episode seven times in three days. I think in economics this is called the law of diminishing marginal utility. I can now repeat every line word-for-word, and pinpoint to the second which parts are going to crack Chinese college students up. Luckily, my students seemed to really enjoy it.

For the Halloween writing activity, I had them stand in a circle and gave them each a piece of paper with the opening sentence of a horror story on it. Each person added one sentence to the paper and then passed it to the next person, who added another sentence and passed it, and so on. In theory, the paper would make its way around the circle and be a complete story once it returned to its original owner. While the kids had a ball with this, the actual quality of the final product varied tremendously. I included a few good and bad (unedited) examples below, with a little bit of comedic commentary added in. Different colors represent when a different student started writing.


Tom ran through the dark forest... He was very hungry. He searched something to eat. At this moment, he found a bag. Then he picked up this bag and found so many delecious candy and food there. Then, he set on the grass and eat. But blood start spitting out of his mouth when he eat. He found all the food was gone, and lots of blood on his hands. At that time, he felt something in his mouth and spited it. What he spited out was a snack. The snack look at him and say "Hello, I was a girl once". He was very scared. He thought the snack could be good luck, but as he was scared, he ran back home as soon as he could. A week later, he died. Someone said he became a snack too.
(I love this one because it was definitely the most creative of the bunch. Who knew snacks could be the antagonist of a horror story? I will never look at my oreo's the same again.)


Nancy was very scared... when she see a animal! It's not a usual animal. It had black fare with two sharp teeth. It looks like very ugly. And it is very fearful! She want to eat people. Then she characte as a ghost. But she meet a beautiful man!
(While I'm not entirely sure what happened, at least she found love in the end!)


Sarah did not believe in monsters, until... When the Holliween come, at night. A strange man knock the door of Sarah's. He's listening a voice and looking a small thing! It's a white one with fur. Then Sarah saw a pair of red eyes. He think it must be a child. Actually, it isn't a child. It is a E.T. with UFO.
(This is the only one that made me say WTF aloud to myself.)


People say, "Vampires are not real." But... I don't think so, I think vampires are real. One day, I walked through the forest. Suddenly I found someone was behind me. Being scared, I ran fast. So did it. Then I saw there's a river in front of me, so I jump in the river. But the water became warm and bloody, until I realized this was not a river but a blood river. I felt something bad will happen to me, then a black shadow come to me. A big mouth with buckteeth was in front of my face. Then... then... was it vampire? I couldn't believe it, but it was real. So, watch out your back!
(This gem came from my favorite class who keep me from feeling I'm a complete failure at teaching on a weekly basis...)

The rest of the stories generally ended one of two ways:
1. The main character would find out his friends were just playing a joke on him.
2. The main character was eaten.

To conclude, and as a reward for reading this far, here's a picture I showed in class of me trick-or-treating when I was little:

And just to embarrass her, here's one of my sister:

Happy Halloween!

Seeing Through the Fog

There are only two types of days in Hechuan: rainy days and polluted days. Oh, excuse me, I meant "foggy" days. That's what my students call them.

Rainy days are the best because sometimes they bring an hour or two of sunshine and clear skies. Unfortunately, "foggy" days are more common. It makes me cringe to think of what I'm doing to my lungs by living here. Sometimes I have the urge to hold my breath whenever I go outside.

View from my bedroom window on one of those very rare, clear days

Same view from my window on a polluted day

Cooking with Chinese Characteristics

Last night a few of my students came over to my apartment to cook dinner. They were looking forward to each making a traditional Chinese dish and I had promised two American dishes to make up a sort of strange potluck. They brought over a ton of ingredients and then proceeded to ask me all of the English names for things. Anyone who has lived with me knows I am not a very avid cook, so when they pointed to some weird green vegetable I deferred to a Chinese-English dictionary. I learned they were making má là dòufu (spicy tofu), jīdàn hé xīhóngshì tāng (egg and tomato soup), jīdàn hé cōnghuā (scrambled eggs and scallions), and zhān jiǎozi (sticky dumplings).

The first order of business was to get my stove to work. I have never used it, mainly because it scares me to death. It is so old fashioned that there is no automatic ignition. Instead, you have to turn the gas on and then stick your hand dangerously close to the burner with a lighter until flames shoot up and/or your kitchen explodes in a ball of fire. Luckily, one of my students had experience with this at home and could do it without killing us all.

Lighting the stove

They quickly got to work: frying tomatoes, whisking eggs, chopping scallions (the green vegetable I could not identify), and mixing flour and sugar into dough. Hilarity ensued when they forced me to try and whisk eggs with chopsticks and I failed miserably. More hilarity ensued when in turn I forced them to try and whisk eggs with a fork. To me, cooking with chopsticks looks so inefficient, but they made it seem easy and ignored the spoons, forks, and knives I had laid out. As the cooking progressed, any idea that Chinese food might be healthy for me was quickly shot to hell as I observed how much oil they used in everything. And I thought American's loved fried food...

Carlon demonstrates whisking

And then forces me to try

Alice frying the eggs

while Jennifer chops tomatoes

and then fries them too

At this point, you may be wondering what I could possibly be making with the limited Western ingredients over here. Well, I was making spaghetti with marinara sauce and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Two of my culinary specialties, and sources of incredible wonder to my Chinese students who had never tried either. And let me tell you, they absolutely loved PB&J. It was by far the hit of the night, and they could not stop talking about it. One girl even called her mom to tell her about it right in the middle of the meal. It just goes to show that sometimes less is more. Too bad I only have a limited amount of peanut butter and am loathe to share it again.

Enjoying their PB&J sandwiches

Posing with the spicy tofu

Our completed dinner

Ready to eat!

When we finished dinner, I was a little disappointed because the sticky dumplings that the dough had been made for never appeared. It was not until clean-up that I was told sticky dumplings are not in fact dumplings as I was imagining, but instead a type of dessert. This dessert was extremely complicated to make because it involved sparring with an incredibly hot pan full of oil. Dozens of dough-balls were thrown in the pot at once and each could only be left in for a certain amount of time without overcooking them, so they were stirred and picked out quickly while trying to avoid getting scalded by flying drops of oil. But boy was it worth it. Sticky dumplings essentially tasted like fresh mini-donuts slathered in tons of sugar. We ate more dumplings than dinner, and by the end the girls pretty much had to roll out the door back to their dormitories. We have lots of flour and sugar left over, so since it has already been established I will not be lighting the stove and attempting to fight oil by myself, I'm looking forward to another round of stick dumpling cooking with them in the future!

Carefully adding the dumplings to the boiling oil, using the pan's lid as a shield

Sticky dumplings!